1. The Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of personal computers, and more particularly to the ability to securely and automatically and reliably self-manage backing up data of personal computing systems while minimizing the need for human interactions.
2. Background of the Art
Within the past two decades the development of raw computing power coupled with the proliferation of computer devices has grown at exponential rates. This phenomenal growth along with the advent of the Internet have led to a new age of accessibility, particularly by computing devices—to other people, other systems, and most importantly, to information. New levels of complexity, in communication, networking and information management and storage, unfortunately have also arisen concurrent with this phenomenal growth.
The simultaneous explosion of information and integration of technology into everyday life has brought on new demands for how people manage and maintain computer systems. As the computing industry continues its growth, it appears that the marketplace is rapidly reaching a juncture in the evolution of the industry's views toward computing in general and the associated infrastructure, middleware, and services that maintain them. At this juncture is the realization that the ever-increasing system complexity is reaching a level beyond human ability to manage and secure. This increasing complexity with a shortage of skilled I/T professionals points towards an inevitable need to automate many of the functions associated with computing today.
IBM recognizes the need to automate many of the functions associated with computing today, and is setting forth a vision for the future of computing as “autonomic computing.” This new paradigm shifts the fundamental definition of the technology age from one of computing, to one defined by data. Access to data from multiple, distributed sources, in addition to traditional centralized storage devices will allow users to transparently access information when and where they need it. At the same time, this new view of computing will necessitate changing the industry's focus on processing speed and storage to one of developing distributed networks that are largely self-managing, self-diagnostic, and transparent to the user.
This new computer paradigm requires that the design and implementation of computer systems, software, storage and support must exhibit certain basic fundamentals from a user perspective: (1) the system must be flexible such that it will be able to sift data via a platform- and device-agnostic approach; (2) the nature of the autonomic system is that it is always on; and (3) the system will perform its tasks and adapt to a user's needs without dragging the user into the intricacies of its workings (i.e., transparent).
IBM has already introduced certain solutions in the realm of autonomic computing solutions such as: the Intelligent Resource Director (IRD), a self-managing operating system for the eServer z900, which allows the server to dynamically reallocate processing power to a given application as workload demands increase; Workload Management, which is available for IBM's mainframes and is being extended to heterogeneous platforms; the self-healing cellular architecture of Blue Gene, a high-speed machine now under construction at IBM Research, which will detect failed processors and redistribute work to compensate for their loss without interruption; and Tivoli's Intrusion Manager, an integrated approach to security that reduces the overall complexity of security management.
However, though these solutions are ideal for the specific areas of autonomic computing they solve, these solutions are not focused towards resolving problems personal computer users face concerning general data backup on user systems.
Data backup is a significant problem that has been identified by many personal computer users, in small and large businesses. For instance, the failure of a hard-drive can result in significant losses to individuals and businesses, not only in the form of the data itself, but also in terms of the user's time (spent recovering some of the data), integrity of the company's files, the IT shop's time assisting the user and restoring any data that might have been backed up on servers or off-line storage, and in certain cases, the true authentication of original data.
It is known that there exist many software, utilities-based and hardware offerings that purport to assist a user in storing data locally to their own hard drive. It is also known that recent offerings are being made available to permit the users on the network to store data on the network. Each of these types of offerings is limited however, as the former often limits storage to a local hard drive or a local attached storage device, and the latter is cost-prohibitive to many individual and business users. For instance the recent offering by EMC, called the EMC Centera, is noted in a Network World article (Apr. 29, 2002) as being, a device that is a hardware array with embedded software that resides on an Ethernet network and handles the storage of content such as electronic documents, movies, e-mail, check images and broadcast content. However, the reported cost of the EMC Centera product in excess of $200,000.
Similarly, even the locally stored offerings, such as ZIP drives, CD-R or CD-RW media, though less costly than network offerings, remain relatively expensive, and are costly to a user in terms of time as well since the use of these offerings can be time-consuming as well. Additionally, with each of these types of offerings there is the underlying requirement that a user be reasonably knowledgeable and/or disciplined in the process of performing back ups to their system, consistently.
However, it is believed that user's of personal computer will soon have a multitude of excess storage capacity on their systems. This excess capacity is due in part to the density gains made in magnetic storage media as well as the reduced costs to acquire storage capacity. For instance, magnetic storage density continues to increase at roughly 100% per year, which is at a pace that is more rapid than the growth forecasts for user storage requirements. As a result, it is likely that users will be able to afford more storage than they actually need in typical PC clients. Additionally, for example, 3.5″ desktop drives represent the least expensive form of on-line magnetic storage on a per-GB basis (i.e., these drives are cheaper than server drives which feature higher rotation rates and faster interfaces, and cheaper than notebook drives, although they are also moving to much higher capacities in the near future).
It is important to note however that there is a lower limit to the cost of any hard-drive, based on the need for at least one platter, one head, one spindle motor, one actuator arm, and a minimal suite of electronics. As a result, hard-drives do not scale to very low capacities in a cost-efficient manner as the fixed costs remain. Soon, therefore, it is foreseeable that as the capacity of even the lowest-cost desktop drives will be far higher than most users require, there still remain a minimum fixed cost point. Akin to the desktop market, it is likely that the capacity of low-end notebook drives would therefore also exceed a user's actual needs and/or requirements, as well as achieving a fixed cost point.
As used herein the terms “personal computer,” “computer,” “PC,” “system,” “computing device,” and “server,” whether in their singular or plural form, are used interchangeably and are intended to have similar meanings and uses in relation to functions and characteristics associated with electronic information handling systems. Further, it is realized that “storage medium” of a computer may be integrated or separate from a computer (such as hard disk or a compact disc, for example), and that the term “storage medium” as used herein is intended to be used interchangeably as such.